Walter Reed, The Right, And Your Place
by user Docsplice From: www.toosense.net The whole theme of this program today is centered on the fact that there's an ongoing effort to destroy the primary institution that guarantees the freedom and security of this country. That's the US military. That's what's at stake here. '' -Rush Limbaugh On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide. Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment. - WaPo As Dana Priest and and Anne Hull's investigative report on the condition and treatment of American soldiers in Walter Reed Army hospital, located smack in the middle of the The Ave (Georgia Avenue) here in Washington DC, people all over the country react in shame and anger over the treatment of American veterans returning from battlefields overseas to neglect, frustration, and an impenetrable bureaucracy that attempts to minimize costs and treatment to those whom it has asked for everything they could possibly give. While the Left has seized upon the scandal as proof of hypocrisy on the Right, the Right, for all its blustering rhetoric about support for the troops, has remained largely silent. Glenn Greenwald documents Jonah Goldberg's reaction, which is principally outrage at Dana Priest's alleged "agenda", rather than concern for the troops. On Fox News, whose owner freely admits promoted an agenda for war in Iraq, Washington Bureau Chief Brit Hume invokes the stereotype of the " shellshocked veteran" to question John Murtha's recent criticism of the Bush Administration. This behavior begs the question of why the Right can continue to hold the lives of American men and women hostage to its political agenda while proclaiming its loyalty to those it so callously exploits. The reason is because American conservatism is currently dedicated to preserving a social class system that preserves power for a largely white male minority, while allowing others who do not fit certain social standards to only labor in its pursuit. The Right allows American soldiers to suffer, die, and come home to substandard medical care because it believes it is their place to do so. Their fury over illegal immigration and Spanish language services in America does not prevent them from employing illegal immigrants, or hiring Spanish language Army recruiters but failing to provide interpretive services for those wounded veterans whose families do not speak English. ''Family members who speak only Spanish have had to rely on Salvadoran housekeepers, a Cuban bus driver, the Panamanian bartender and a Mexican floor cleaner for help. Walter Reed maintains a list of bilingual staffers, but they are rarely called on, according to soldiers and families and Walter Reed staff members. Evis Morales's severely wounded son was transferred to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda for surgery shortly after she arrived at Walter Reed. She had checked into her government-paid room on post, but she slept in the lobby of the Bethesda hospital for two weeks because no one told her there is a free shuttle between the two facilities. "They just let me off the bus and said 'Bye-bye,' " recalled Morales, a Puerto Rico resident. Morales found help after she ran out of money, when she called a hotline number and a Spanish-speaking operator happened to answer. "If they can have Spanish-speaking recruits to convince my son to go into the Army, why can't they have Spanish-speaking translators when he's injured?" Morales asked. "It's so confusing, so disorienting." Even as Virgil Goode warns of an impending apocalypse brought on by Muslim fanatics, his party continues to oppose allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military, to the point of dismissing Arabic speakers who are not heterosexual. The Army has relaxed recruiting standards to the point of allowing high school dropouts to serve, and so those whom the system has so callously failed are asked to give their lives for it. The reason that none of this concerns the American Right as much as a vague, undefined "success" in Iraq is that the fear and promise of war can be used to support policies that keep us in our place. Blacks, Latinos, the workers (blue collar, white collar), Gays, the military, our place is merely to serve the economic and political agenda of the American elite, so loyally represented by the Republican Party and the Bush Administration. The reason that nothing has been done about Walter Reed is the same reason that nothing was done about New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, or rising income inequality, or global warming, is that it is our place to suffer for their goals and ideals, our lives are to be sacrificed scrubbing floors and dodging bullets so that the American elite can live a kind of freedom that is only understood as where and what you spend your money on. They believe that it is the place of gay people to suffer and live their lives in silence and shame, that it is the place of African-Americans and Latinos to work knuckle to bone in jobs the children of congressmen wouldn't take for a summer, that if you don't speak English you don't belong here unless you can lift a gun and point it at someone who speaks Arabic. They believe that if you didn't have a car to escape Hurricane Katrina you deserved to lose your house, your mother, your child. They believe that if you can't make rent it is because you're lazy or stupid. They believe that despite Middle Passage, the American Revolution, the genocide of Native Americans, the Civil War, and Jim Crow that Iraq's inability to emerge as a secular pro-western democracy is proof of intrinsic Arab savagery and conversely, their own cultural and racial superiority. So when one of us is injured in Iraq and comes home to a hospital that can't or won't treat them effectively or with dignity, it is because it is our place to be without dignity. After seven years of this, what are we supposed to think of them? __NOEDITSECTION__ Category: Opinions Category: Opinions by User Docsplice Category: February 19, 2007 Category: Iraq Opinions Category: Bush Administration Opinions Category: Right Wing Media Opinions Category: Racism Opinions Category: Classism Opinions Category: The Military Opinions Category: Opinions From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki. From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki.